Everything you need to know about xp in FFXI, after the Super Speed XP boost updates for solo and pa

fistorm

"Dont forget to post on this to keep it availible to others"

 

They have now brought the xp benifits to abyss to the normal areas now:

 

You can now have xp chains of up to 1000 xp a kill in partys now.  Starts at aprox. 450 xp a kill now on tough to better mobs in party.

 

Soloing has now become so much easier, you can get 150 xp a kill starting on easy prey mobs now.  And on top of that you can now do field of valor for added xp as many times a day as you want now.

 

They still have level sync (which allows you to sync down to a lvl  of the lowest party member and recieve xp at the rate they also recive it as.  so you can be be 65 and sync to 20 and get full xp on worm kills or crab kills.  remember to wear gear thats 20 or below to get the full benifit of your gear though if you sync down.)

 

Level sync is still a major factor in leveling.     Quifim Island is pretty packed full of people level sync'ing,  and same goes for valkrum dunes.   Jungle is still active but there usually  a wait to party out there, people dont like airshiping out there when they can just easily get xp right in qufim island or dunes.  Garliage citadel is scatterly active also, people don't like the run out there and slower kill rates.   

 

Leveling in areas 35+ seem to be pretty non existant because you can lvl sync down to 10-25 and get great xp and faster kills.

 

Leveling 70+ picks back up again in Abyss (add on areas that were meant for pretty much just straight xping, but at a super xp enhanced rate inside alliance parties),  where the xp is so insane that you can lvl you from 75-90 in a matter of a day or two depending on how much you play per a day.   20 merit points takes about 2 hours of playing in abyss.   Many 30+ characters try to get into these parties to get a power lvl to 75,  but is highly frowned on by members of these alliances.

 

So this is pretty much a summery of what leveling looks like in ffxii as far as experience parties go  as of to date.

 

Added:  the xp rate in abysea starts out low at about 15xp a kill and gradually increases to 600+ xp a kill with frequtent bonus chests that contain 500-2500 xp for everyone in alliance.   Only bad thing is when you leave abyss to do your merit points in mog house and come back you start back at low xp per a kill and have to build up the xp per  a kill again.    

If your out in abyss for long periods of time youll stay at the xp rate and it will continue to climb in xp per kill

scythe99

If you ask me Abyss ruined the game, I liked the old leveling it was alot slower, but you felt more rewarded for it. Now with bascally triple exp.. the leveling rate went from fine, to wow-like which I don't think is what was intended by SE at all. I opened my account and logged in and the game was dead, even qufim was empty. I was on the Leviathan server which is a pretty full server last I checked.

fistorm

Originally posted by scythe99

If you ask me Abyss ruined the game, I liked the old leveling it was alot slower, but you felt more rewarded for it. Now with bascally triple exp.. the leveling rate went from fine, to wow-like which I don't think is what was intended by SE at all. I opened my account and logged in and the game was dead, even qufim was empty. I was on the Leviathan server which is a pretty full server last I checked.

 Yes,  some worlds are dead I'm hearing, which is why the server merge is being done on march 16.

The info I use is from the Shiva Server.   Your server should see tons more activity after the server merge this month.

WSIMike

Originally posted by scythe99

If you ask me Abyss ruined the game, I liked the old leveling it was alot slower, but you felt more rewarded for it.

Abyssea was the final nail in the coffin. SE started down the path to where the game is now a while ago, though, starting with Campaign Battle, which people found ways to use to power-level jobs.  They did so without having to actually play them in some cases. Remember when Campaign was still new and people figured out they could level any job in relative safety just by subbing Bard and buffing others up while a battle was going on? SE did finally address that, but it was abused for a while before they did.

The implementation of Level Sync, in my opinion, was a major nail in the coffin. As described in the OP, people stopped xp'ing in areas appropriate to their level and instead sync'd down 30+ levels to PL in Qufim. It made it extremely difficult to find enough people to group with at the higher levels, 'cause as usual, most people just followed the herd and level sync'd in lower level areas.

The ironic part - and  when people really showed how incredibly short-sighted they can be when it comes to getting xp - is many people did it with the explanation that "they hate level grinding and wanted to get it over with faster".

Thing is, by level sync'ing their level 70 character down to xp in Qufim, they ultimately gave themselves *twice* the work.

Why?

Because when you're sync'd down, your skill levels are restricted to the skill cap for your effective job level. You cannot skill-up in level sync parties if your actual skill level is higher than the cap for your active job level.

----- Begin Example ------

For those who may not play XI and don't get what I mean... Here's an example.. using arbitrary numbers... Let's say at level 70, your Sword skill is at 200. The cap for Sword at level 70 is 204. You have 4 skill levels to go to cap Sword for level 70. You go down to Qufim Island to sync down to level 26 and get more xp... maybe you get your job to level 73 in that group. However, at your sync'd level of 26, the skill cap for Sword is only 30 (again, arbitrary number), which is of course far lower than your actual skill level of 200. Because your effective skill level at 26 is lower than your actual skill level of 200, you are getting no skill-ups so long as you're sync'd.

When you disband and un-sync, your effective job level returns to 73, but your Sword skill has not budged. It's still at 200. Further, not only are you now behind the 4 levels you needed to cap it at level 70, you're now behind an additional 12 skill levels for the additional 3 job levels you picked up. What this means is that you are less effective at fighting mobs your own level at level 73 because your Sword skill is still 3+ Job levels behind. So, you now have 16 skill levels to make up in Sword... the 4 you started with, plus the 12 you would have earned for levels 71-73 had you leveled up while unsync'd.

It's not as bad in that example. But imagine what happens when people decided to level sync to 75 in Qufim Island, and started out when their job was level 30? That means that for every level they earn from 31-75... they're getting no skill-ups. None. Zip. Zero. They will ding level 75 having the effective skills of a level 30 character. The word gimped is truly fitting here. And now they have to get all those skills caught up if they have any intention of using them effectively in end-game content.

What did people - in all their brilliance - decide was the best way to resolve this? They'd form parties in Boyadha tree to go beat on crabs for hours to skill-up instead... which was often over-camped, making it take even longer. Mind you, skilling up can take a while even under the best conditions.

The net  result of all this is that in trying to reduce the "grind", these people have actually increased it. The smart way to go about it would be to continue leveling in the way SE originally intended... xp'ing in groups at your own level, on mobs your own level as much as possible. Level sync'ing is great if you're already at level cap, or if you don't mind having to make up a few skill levels here and there. But as a power-leveling approach, it's completely counter-intuitive to the way FFXI Job system and Skill system are setup.

---- End Example -----

There are many examples to be given of how the overall player mentality has degraded over time in FFXI, but the skill-up situation is a great one. Earlier in the game's existence, people were adamant about keeping their skills capped as much as possible, or at least no more than 2 or 3 levels behind. Now? Pfft... they couldn't care less how far behind their skills are... as long as they're getting their 30k or whatever xp per hour... that's all they care about.

On balance, it's another example of how people's short-sightedness and poor choice-making ultimately bit them in the ass. And of course,  most blamed SE for it when they got tired of leveling 40+ levels worth of skills. Natch.

... anyway...

Level Sync definitely helped the situation snow-ball... Then came FoV which SE intended for people to use as "filler content" - not a primary leveling source... which is why it was restricted to one task per in-game day. Of course, people saw it and - again, only being able to relate to anything in terms of how fast it helps them level - many thought "Oh! This is supposed to be a new way to level more easily! But SE has made it too slow!! Fix it SE!!"... For a while, SE stuck to their concept of what FoV was supposed to be... Apparently now they've given up on that too.

... and now there's Abyssea where they've dropped any pretense at trying to maintain XI as the game it was originally envisioned and desgigned as and have thrown themselves headlong into the waters of "faster leveling because that's all that matters".

Funny thing is... it doesn't seem to be helping maintain or increase the population.

Kinda funny isn't it? For all the years that SE stuck to their guns, and remained firm on keeping FFXI a unique offering in the MMO space... they were rewarded with a consistent and very loyal population of ~500k players. For 7 years, the population held firm and they never needed a server merge.  However, around the same overall timeframe that they decided to turn a corner and start taking XI down the "more soloable/faster xp" path they've taken it... populations started to drop, people started to leave... and now we're coming up on server merge number two.

I know so many people, myself included, who started that game from day 1 and swore they'd never leave 'til SE took the servers offline. It didn't seem fathomable... we all loved the game - warts and all - too much to even consider it. Alas, all but a few of those people have given up and left. Why? Because they also never believed SE would jump the shark the way they have. FFXI is no longer the game it once was.

People will argue "they needed to make these changes to make the game more casual friendly so people wouldn't keep quitting". Well, that another merge is coming would seem to indicate that people are still leaving, despite the changes. You don't need merges with a stable population. You certainly don't need them with an increasing population.

I personally believe, and will always believe, if they stayed true to what XI was originally created to be and didn't bend to the impatient "faster xp!! more solo!!" crowd... the game would still be holding strong and may not have even required its first server merge yet. No way of proving that of course, because what's happened has happened and can't be changed. I firmly believe, though, that SE making the changes they did had a lot to do with where it is now.

I know people will disagree with that. But, that's my personal view on it.